This invention relates to soap making and more specifically to a method for making scented soaps that uses the raw plant material in the process and renders a soap with a natural scent that smells more like real flora than soaps scented with traditional scenting techniques.
Soap is made by the combination of a fatty acid such as those found in vegetable or animal oils, and a basic solution such as sodium hydroxide or lye. These elements are mixed together under the application of heat until they are neutralized in a process called saponification. Colorants are added for color and essential or fragrance oils are added for scent.
Fragrance oils are chemically made scents that are added to the soap near the end of the soap making process. Essential oils are aromatic oils which are extracted from flora and are also added near the end of the soap making process. If a plant material possessing a desired scent, medicinal quality, or color is soaked or "infused" in the fatty acids used to make soap, these fatty acids will absorb some of these qualities and thus impart these qualities to the finished soap.
Problems, however, exist with these prior art methods of scenting the soap. Most of the fragrance oils do not smell like plants occurring in nature and are usually discernible over a natural oil. Also because of their chemical nature, fragrance oils are not as desirable to many consumers. A problem with essential oil scented soaps is that essential oils are extremely expensive and available in a limited number of scents. The types of essential oils which are available tend to be made from European species of plants so that local varieties of plants in other regions of the world are not represented. Additionally, essential oils often do not smell much like the actual plant that they are made from. Essential oils tend to emphasize "floral" perfume-like smells, and not the natural smell of the actual plant. While fatty acids infused with real plants can smell closer to the aroma of a natural plant and can be made from any flora, local or not, the scent is so weak as to be inconsequential and only valuable as a secondary source of scent.
Because of the above mentioned problems in the prior art, making a strongly scented soap bearing the natural aroma of flora has heretofore been unrealizable.